The circumstances under which Tiglath-Pileser II., ascended the throne in the year B.C. 745 are unknown to us.  No confidence can be placed in the statement of Bion and Polyhistor which seems to have been intended to refer to this monarch, whom they called Beletaras—­a corruption perhaps of the latter half of the name—­that he was, previously to his elevation to the royal dignity, a mere vine-dresser, whose occupation was to keep in order the gardens of the king.  Similar tales of the low origin of self-raised and usurping monarchs are too common in the East, and are too often contradicted by the facts, when they come known to us, for much credit to attach to the story told by these late writers, the earlier of whom, must have written five or six hundred years after Tiglath-Pileser’s time.  We aught, however, conclude, without much chance of mistake, from such a story being told, that the king-intended acquired the throne irregularly; that either he was not of the blood royal, or that, being so, he was at any rate not the legitimate heir.  And the conclusion at which we should thus arrive is confirmed by the monarch’s inscriptions; for though he speaks repeatedly of “the kings his fathers.” and even calls the royal buildings at Galati. “the palaces of his fathers,” yet he never mentions his actual father’s name in any record that has come down to us.  Such a silence is so contrary to the ordinary practice of Assyrian monarchs, who glory in their descent and parade it on every possible occasion, that, where it occurs, we are justified in concluding the monarch to have been an usurper, deriving his title to the crown, not from his ancestry or from any law of succession, but from a successful revolution, in which he played the principal part.  It matters little that such a monarch, when he is settled upon the throne, claims, in a vague and general way, connection with the kings of former times.  The claim may often have a basis of truth; for in monarchies where polygamy prevails, and the kings have numerous daughters to dispose of, almost all the nobility can boast that they are of the blood royal.  Where the claim is in no sense true, it will still be made; for it flatters the vanity of the monarch, and there is no one to gainsay it.

Only in such cases we are sure to find a prudent vagueness—­an assertion of the fact of the connection, expressed in general terms, without any specification of the particulars on which the supposed fact rests.

On obtaining the crown whatever the circumstances under which he obtained it—­Tiglath-Pileser immediately proceeded to attempt the restoration of the Empire by engaging in a series of wars, now upon one, now upon another frontier, seeking by his unwearied activity and energy to recover the losses suffered through the weakness of his predecessors, and to compensate for their laches by a vigorous discharge of all the duties of the kingly office.  The order of these wars, which formerly it was impossible to determine,